Soliloquy

James Makin Gallery, 17 April – 10 May, 2008

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Man in Squared SpaceDr Rose Stone, Art Historian

Godwin Bradbeer’s drawing, Man in Squared Space, (2007) is a key image in this new exhibition of his work titled Soliloquy. Part of the artist’s sustained investigation of the human figure, this work is one of a several images of the head and shoulders of a man seen slightly from above, immobile and alone within a large pictorial world of white geometricised space.

It seems that the solitary self and the interior monologue have informed the work of Bradbeer almost from the beginning of what has been a long and impressive career.

A virtuoso draftsman who has won most of the major drawing prizes on offer in this country, including the Dobell Prize in 1998, Bradbeer has a profound understanding of human anatomy and he also teaches drawing from the human body.

These drawings, he says ‘seek an abstraction of human design that is simultaneously universal and specific.

Bradbeer testifies that the Imago drawings are ‘a search through a million faces seen, for an image that represents the complexity of humanity beyond the cliché.’